opportunities

Call for applications : Boda Boda Lounge 2018

The Boda Boda Lounge is a continent-wide video art festival that runs from November 16 to 18, 2018, in more than 15 locations throughout Africa. Boda Boda Lounge is currently collecting videos, films and short films by artists based in Africa or the Diaspora. The selected works will be presented during screenings or in an exhibition. The Boda Boda Lounge is based on the belief that video art can fuel exchanges between different contexts in Africa. It allows both to transcend physical limits and allows an intimate atmosphere of introspection and contemplation.

An English text translated into French and then translated into Xhosa. The same text in Xhosa is then re-translated into English and then French. Through the language, various contexts and cultures are used to reach another imaginary, and consequently to multiply the mythologies.

The 2018 edition entitled Soft Pow (ers) was designed by Euridice artist Zaituna Kala. Artists are invited to respond to Édouard Glissant's notion of Tout Monde to deepen and complicate the links between different African worlds beyond the heritage of the English, Portuguese and French-speaking worlds. Creolization rather than hybridization. So, create a new language within these parameters - an All World identity, that sweet power, which by nature runs cryptically. It is a call to think about identity, not as a single strand or truth, but as a form that has been shaped and reshaped by different encounters. The result is a dynamic identity that is not limited by location, at a time when technology is flattening space. We are then faced with the possibility of losing the perfect diction (the mother tongue) - faced with the inability to exist in one language. We must therefore accept the All World, and allow everyone to find new ways of life for a daily practice that is informed by a multiplicity of contexts.

Artists are invited to respond with artistic proposals, which refer to multiple perspectives of existing, practicing and interacting with their contexts in all their complexity.

Eligibility criteria:

Any artist from Africa or the Diaspora working in digital and multimedia art can participate

The job must have been produced in the last 5 years

Artists can send a maximum of 3 videos

Videos should not exceed 10 minutes

Each work must be accompanied by a registration form

Applications can be sent to bodalounge@vansa.co.za no later than August 31, 2018 (wetransfer / dropbox submissions are accepted)

History of Boda Boda Lounge

The term Boda Boda is an adaptation of the word border and refers to a cross-border movement, suggesting physical mobility across lines that universally represent the division of spaces. Boda Boda Lounge is a video art broadcast project across the continent and was initiated by Visual Art South Africa Network (VANSA) (Johannesburg, South Africa) and the Waza Art Center (Lubumbashi, DRC) in 2014. Boda Boda Lounge wants to facilitate access for African artists to participate in the project and at the same time work with a variety of African arts organizations. It is a commitment to low-cost exchange processes that are widely available on the African continent. Soft Pow (ers) will be the 3rd edition of the project.